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Journal

A fascinating article at http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,6109,911115,00.html by a documentary maker who wanted to film A.S. Byatt writing a novel. And did. For three and a half years. I felt for A. S. Byatt all the way through. (I said no, when people wanted to do a similar documentary on me a few years ago, and reading this article I'm glad I did.)

Popped in to Dreamhaven books today, where I signed a pile of stuff for their neilgaiman.net website, and I picked up the latest copy of Locus, which contains a marvellous interview with Mike Moorcock. When I was about 15, my friend Dave Dickson and I turned up at Mike's house in Ladbroke Grove to interview him, and if he was taken aback by our age or school uniforms he managed not to show it. He talked for hours, was funny and fascinating and smart and set a chillingly high example of what to grow up to be if you wanted to grow up to be a writer.

Was sent, and read, a copy of Stephen Rauch's book Neil Gaiman's the Sandman and Joseph Campbell: In Search of Modern Myth from Wildside Press. It was good, readable and intelligent, all three of which which came as a huge relief to me. You could probably teach a pretty good SANDMAN class using just that and Hy Bender's Sandman Companion.

I bought a few books at DreamHaven, and it was only when I pulled them out that I realised the titles form a sequence: OUT OF THE DARK, IN THE DARK, and THE DARKEST PART OF THE WOODS, although they're respectively short stories by Robert W Chambers, E. Nesbit, and a new novel by Ramsey Campbell. A PLEASING TERROR is the last book I got, a huge and definitive collection of the writings of M. R. James... (All links to the publishers pages on the books.)